Data visualization – Data Big and Small

The visualization of personal networks

I am pleased to co-organize with Vincent Lorant of UCLouvain a special session on “The visualization of personal networks” at the forthcoming INSNA Sunbelt conference (12-16 July 2022, Cairns, Australia, and online).

Personal network data collection methods allow describing the composition and the structure of an individual’s (hereafter ego) social network. This method has been implemented in different domains such as migration, drug use, mental health, aging, education, and social welfare. Over the last years, these data have also been used to provide respondents with visualizations of their personal network, using different algorithms and customizing results through computer assisted data collection. Visualization gives valuable feedback to the respondent, improves data validity and may trigger positive behavioural changes, notably in vulnerable individuals or groups. Yet, visualization is not a free lunch. Recent research has evidenced the ethical dilemmas of providing such feedback to individuals: ego’s social life is being exposed, the researcher may be exposed as well, and such feedback may imply some contractual exchanges or therapeutic implications that require attention.

This session aims to describe the stakes of different visualization approaches to personal networks with different populations. We welcome qualitative and quantitative papers addressing issues related to the implementation of visualization or reports of personal networks in terms of techniques, levels of respondent’s satisfaction with visualization, conditions under which visualization is recommended or discouraged, and effects of the personal network visualization for the respondent.

More information on the conference and the submission process is available here.

Visualization in mixed-methods research on social networks

The journal Sociological Research Online has just published (31 May 2016) a special section on “Visualization in Mixed-Methods Research on Social Networks”, guest edited by Alessio D’Angelo, Louise Ryan and myself.

FigureL1 — Figure 1 – Tubaro, Ryan & D’Angelo

The five papers in this peer-reviewed special issue explore the potential of visual tools to accompany qualitative and mixed-methods research. Visualization can support data collection, analysis and presentation of results; it can be used for personal or complete networks; it can be paper-and-pencil or computer-based. Overall, visualization helps to jointly understand network contents and network structures.

The special issue is freely accessible from all commercial (non-academic) internet providers.

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Databeers now in London

In the midst of the chaos and sadness of the past week, a more leisurely note: the first of a new “Databeers” series of events in London yesterday evening, following a format that has been experiencing a huge success in Spain, Italy and other countries. The event is very informal, and getting to know other data enthusiasts is the main goal. There are a few flash talks with free beers and networking time.

The next Data Beers London event is on 25 February 2016.

Data and social networks: empowerment and new uncertainties (in Italian)

I gave a presentation on the topic of “Data and social networks: empowerment and new uncertainties” at the Better Decisions Forum on Big Data and Open Data that took place in Rome on 12 November 2014. The event brought together six speakers from different backgrounds on a variety of topics related to data, and participants were businesspeople, public administration managers, journalists, data and computer scientists.

Here is a video of my talk:

Unfortunately as you will have noticed, the slides are not always very clearly visible, so it’s better to download them from their original source:

My interview before my talk:

See? I am trying to stick to my 1st-January commitment of blogging more this year…

“Pro” ana? Sociability and support in eating disorder online communities

This article was first published on Discover Society, November 2014.

Last June, a group of Italian MPs proposed jail terms and fines for authors of so-called “pro-ana” (anorexia) and “pro-mia” (bulimia) websites. These are self-styled online communities on eating disorders which are viewed as promoting extreme dieting and unhealthy eating practices. France and the United Kingdom preceded Italy’s attempt to pass restrictive legislation as far back as 2008-9, and many internet service providers also endeavoured to ban these contents.

But the potential spread of health-hazardous behaviours is probably only one side of the coin, and these websites might also channel health-enhancing assistance, advice, and support (Yeshua-Katz & Martins 2013). In fact a closer look reveals that website users carefully manage their online socialisation to address their health challenges. Online social spaces enable discussion around the illness and constitute a complement, albeit an admittedly imperfect one, to formal healthcare services. There is no rejection of standard health norms in the name of some extreme ideal of thinness but rather a need – or perhaps, a cry – for extra support.

A social science approach brings out these results. The effect of web interactions on health does not only depend on website contents, but also on how people actually use them, share them, and access resources through them. The social, rather than just clinical dimension of eating disorders, recognized long before the advent of the web (Bell 1985, Orbach 1978), becomes ever more relevant in the current context and calls for a more comprehensive view of the “ana” and “mia” social universe.

(Credit: Roberto Clemente)

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The transformative powers and the politics of data visualisation: a case with personal network data

Data visualisation is still relatively uncommon in the social sciences, and is not normally expected to be part of the standard work of a scholar (contrary, some would say, to what happens in the sciences, where visualisation is sometimes necessary to figure out the properties of objects whose existence is proven, but which cannot be seen). Yet data visualisation has an extraordinary history of accomplishments even in the social realm, as cleverly documented in a forthcoming article by James Moody and Kieran Healy; and classics such as Pierre Bourdieu valued it and attempted to use it in at least some of their work, as Baptiste Coulmont interestingly reported in a blog post.

Yet the digital age offers new opportunities for data visualisation, that are largely unexploited in the social sciences. It becomes not only a tool for the researcher — to explore data prior to conducting statistical analyses, or to present results once the work is done — but also for the general user, the study subject, the beneficiary of any policy under discussion, and the general public. As theorists in the arts and digital humanities (but not much in the social sciences, I am afraid) have noticed, the Internet and all digital infrastructures are becoming today interfaces with databases, and users of all types are immersed in a world of data in a way that was unknown before. This means that data visualisations can have new and more transformative uses, empowering study subjects and people in general, by offering them intuitive and aesthetically appealing tools to better navigate this digital world. But it also involves new dangers, as to who sets the agenda and what aspects or characteristics of the data are being stressed; data are not just objective, ‘raw’ materials but mediated ones, and the choice of how to make them perceptible by the senses is not neutral.

At the annual conference of the British Sociological Association today in Leeds, in the Methodological Innovations Stream, I am presenting data visualisation work I have done with colleagues Antonio A. Casilli, Lise Mounier and Fred Pailler, as well as data visuliaser Quentin Bréant, as part of the research project ANAMIA. We developed three tools — one for data collection, one for data exploration and preliminary analysis, one as a basis for heuristics and presentation of results. The first was for our study subjects, the second for us researchers and our colleagues, the third for us and the larger public. My slides are available:

The power of dataviz (150 years ago)

Science, like the rest of human life, is subject to fashions. Data visualisation is the latest trend: policy-makers and the public are all under its charm, and researchers magically suspend their disbelief — give me a fancy image, and I won’t look too closely at your p-values. So I was intrigued by the discovery, at a talk few days ago by Paul Jackson of the Office for National Statistics, that there are precedents, and that they have a long history behind them.

The story is that of John Snow, an epidemiologist who was persuaded, against the received wisdom of the mid-nineteenth century, that cholera does not propagate through air but through contaminated water or food. But how to convince others? When cholera struck London in 1854, Snow began plotting the location of deaths on a map of Soho: he represented each death through a line parallel to the building front in which the person died.

Snow soon realised that there was a concentration of “death lines” around Broad Street — more specifically, around a water pump at the corner between Broad and Cambridge St.

He managed to convince the authorities to remove the handle of the pump, so that people could no longer use it: in a few days, the number of deaths in the area plummeted. Snow had proven his point and saved lives: using no medical trials, no sophisticated chemistry, just with some basic count statistics, and a clever dataviz.

Small Data to study the Web: The ANAMIA project

We have just published the results of our research project ANAMIA, studying the personal networks and online interactions of persons with eating disorders (“ana” and “mia” in web jargon). The report has just come out:

Documents

Report: Young internet users and eating disorder websites: beyond the notion of “pro-ana” (pdf, 92 pp, in French)

Infographic: results and recommendations of the ANAMIA project (pdf, in French)

Summary (in English!)

The ana-mia webosphere had remained opaque for long, with little data available for a science-based understanding of it. As a result, misconceptions proliferated and policy-makers hesitated — threatening censorship but without devising solutions to reach out and support a population in distress. Our study has been the first to overcome these limitations and reveal the social environment, actual eating practices and digital usages of persons with eating disorders in the English and French web.

Visualization of the personal networks of four individuals with, respectively, EDNOS (Eating Disorders Not Otherwise Specified, top panel, left), anorexia nervosa (top, right), bulimia nervosa (bottom, left), binge eating (bottom right). Hollow circles represent their face-to-face acquaintances, filled circles their online ones. Colours indicate relational proximity to the subject (green: intimate, blue: very close, yellow: close, red: somewhat close). Source: ANAMIA project report.

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